Steve Rogers: Super Soldier #3

I know I predicted that issue #3 would be terrible… well, I was wrong. While I do maintain that many miniseries of late have started strongly and faltered (cough Black Widow: Deadly Origin cough), Steve Rogers: Super Soldier is turning out not to be one of them.

I predicted gloom and doom for this issue because of my distaste for the Mark Gruenwald era of Captain America and of all the times he had Steve Rogers lose his super soldier physique. In my post on issues #1 and 2, I had only cited the first time Gruenwald did it during his 10 year reign of terror (I know it’s impolite to speak ill of the dead, but Gruenwald put me off comics for nearly a decade.), but he actually did it twice more, during the Streets of Poison story arc (and for a few issues after that) and then again during the Fighting Chance story arc. Both were pretty lame.

Much to my shock, Steve Rogers: Super Soldier #3, got it right.

Issue 2 ended on a cliff hanger: it was a very, “Oh no! What’s Steve going to do now? He’s in the worst possible situation he could ever be in!” Issue 3 didn’t handle it that way at all. In fact, we were treated to a fantastic set of flashbacks to Steve’s childhood during the depression, during which he was sickly and thin and routinely got his ass kicked by the neighborhood kids, and how that ultimately made him the man he was rather than the legend he forged during World War II. And once Steve got his chance to beat ass, even in his 90 pound weakling form, it wasn’t as though his training had been deleted from his brain – even without his physique, Steve is the best trained unarmed combatant/gymnast in the world, and he handled the situation as such, and kicked muscle bound butt in a manner that would make any Judo master proud. Very, “Judge me by my size, do you?”

This story still has a bit to go, and I’m optimistic that I won’t end up regretting getting into it in the first place, as I have ultimately come to regret reading most limited series and one-shots.